The sea of sunburned humanity is gone from Indio’s Empire Polo Club but the three-day Stagecoach country music extravaganza produced some moments that won’t disappear as quickly as a case of Bud at the festival RV park.

Reflections from a first-timer:

• This thing is special. Whether an artist was making a debut or headlining, playing before tens of thousands or mere hundreds, each genuinely proclaimed that they were humbled/thrilled/excited/honored/just plain happy to be there. Like its hipper older sister, Coachella, Stagecoach is one of the nation’s biggest, most varied and prestigious music festivals. Performers – and 55,000 fans – didn’t take their time at Stagecoach for granted.

• Martina McBride was really special. Making her first appearance at Stagecoach (how could that be?), McBride delivered the festival’s most indelible moment on Sunday. Her lush, velvety voice was perfection from the first note. Her commanding confidence held the 5:45 p.m. Mane Stage crowd’s attention like a headliner’s would. Her honest and raw lyrics on topics like surviving breast cancer and raising troublesome teenage daughters had an obvious appeal to female fans. But her soulful, soaring turn on “Broken Wings” mesmerized everyone. When she finished on that last, impossibly long-held note, the cheering was so powerful and sustained, McBride was overcome by emotion. She had to collect herself for about a minute. “That’s an amazing thing,” she gasped, when she could finally find words. “I wish you guys could know what it feels like to be up here feeling all the love washing over you. That’s a moment I’ll never forget.” Us either.

• The next big thing is already here. An unscientific survey of T-shirts, handmade signs and decorated trucks reveals that Luke Bryan is the hottest star in country right now. Jason, Blake and Brad got the headliner nods, Steve Martin got camera-snapping gawkers and 85-year-old Ralph Stanley got a reverential standing O, but Bryan got the loudest reaction from the girls and the guys. But mostly the girls. A popular show of love for the heartthrob was taking a song lyric of his and slapping it across your chest, as in “I’m Drunk on Luke Bryan.” Or as one SDSU student’s white tank top read: “This Sorority Sister Shakes It For Luke Bryan.”

• Sara Watkins, Superstar. North County’s arty bluegrass artist Sara Watkins gave a critically acclaimed performance on the Palomino Stage at 1 p.m. Saturday, when most people weren’t even there yet. To Watkins superfan Curt Gibbs, of Long Beach, she was the highlight of the 37 acts scheduled to appear. He sat on the hay-covered ground feet away from the intimate stage area. It was the 59-year-old’s fourth time seeing Watkins – solo or with Nickel Creek – and he recounted how personable she was when they met once. “I have a photo of her from 2008 at Stagecoach with me and my late wife,” he said. “It’s one of my prized photographs.”

• The party isn’t everything. It’s easy to dismiss teenagers and 20-somethings at a music festival as just being there for the non-stop booze and bacchanalia. Some surely were. But it was striking to see so many of them singing along with artists big and small and knowing every word to their songs. Not just the hits, but the B-sides. These were true fans who also liked to party, not party people posing as fans.

• Speaking of alcohol. Take drinking, stir in blazing sun, tons of people and add more drinking and you often get a toxic brew. Yet Stagecoach was relatively drunken-drama free. The obviously inebriated seemed like they were looking for fun, not trouble. Think Charger tailgating party at the Q on steroids, except everyone says “excuse me” and “no worries.” There were exceptions: The Desert Sun Monday quoted Indio police saying there had been 143 arrests Friday through Sunday, “90 to 95 percent” alcohol related.

• We’re country, dammit. As a genre, hip hop can be self-referential, as rock always has been. But new country simply can’t stop singing about being country. We get it, you’re proud. You love your dated redneck reputation. Can’t we go back to songs about gettin’ fired, your wife cheatin’ on you and your dog dyin’? Monday’s Los Angeles Times credits/blames Alabama, which performed Saturday, for “popularizing the trend in country to proclaim one’s country cred,” and for so many songs being “more concerned with where life happened than what happened or why.”

Chris Isaak performed on the Palomino Stage and filled the audience area with his tunes.— John Gastaldo

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Chris Isaak performed on the Palomino Stage and filled the audience area with his tunes.
— John Gastaldo

• It’s 6:20 p.m., do you know where Chris Isaak is? Onstage, that’s where. Because his set was scheduled to start at 6:20. On. The. Dot. Hats off to festival promoters and über-organizers Goldenvoice for keeping everything and everyone on schedule. As at Coachella, Stagecoach set-times are predictably reliable. None of the usual, inexplicable long delays before a concert finally gets underway. That level of efficiency was as impressive as it was a little scary.

• What not to wear. At unofficial count, seven out of 10 people were dressed in cowboy hats, boots, Daisy Dukes and bikini tops for ladies, jeans and no shirt for men. Considering the heat – daytime temperatures climbed into the mid to high 90s – you can see the clothes and hat part. But cowboy boots, with socks no doubt, all day and night? That’s some serious country dedication. What did the other three of the 10 fans sport? Sundresses with boots. Coveralls with boots. Club clothes with boots. Those of us in flip flops? We might have been cooler, but we certainly didn’t look as cool.